Michigan Radio News

NPR News

November 30, 2005

Michigan's Racial Divide - Detroit is well-known to be the most segregated metropolitan area in the nation. But all of Michigan isn't far behind. And the experts say things aren't getting better. Is Michigan really destined to be two states - one black and one white? Why has this happened?

Jack talks with demographer Kurt Metzger; Randal Jelks, a professor at Calvin College and author of the forthcoming book "African Americans in the Furniture City"; and Sandra Combs Birdiett, Director of Multicultural Affairs at Michigan State University's Journalism Department.

This actually happened a couple elections ago. There was a vacancy for Oakland County Drain Commissioner, and a friend of mine had met one of the candidates. Afterwards, she called me.

“Do you know whether he is pro-choice?“ she asked me.

Pro-choice about Drano? I wondered. Septic tanks vs. sump pumps? Naturally, I knew what she really meant, and thought her question was nuts. I didn’t know, and didn’t care.

But later, I saw some of the candidate’s campaign materials. And indeed, the would-be drain czar had listed himself as being pro-life, which usually means, being anti-abortion.

Long ago, abortion ceased to become a normal issue. Now, it has evolved into the mother of all cultural markers. Yes, there are a few anti-abortion Democrats and a few pro-choice Republicans, but not many. Pollsters can ask you five questions, none of which have anything to do with abortion, and usually know how you feel about Roe v Wade.

Naturally, not everybody fits so easily into two camps. There are lots of people who are uneasy with any simplistic position. I know a famous man who is very pro-choice.

But he has a delightful son who he was able to adopt because the baby’s mother was too lazy to show up at the abortion clinic till she was too far along. And Ellen Goodman once wrote that she knew pro-life women who, when it came down to it, would make three exceptions: Rape, Incest, and Me.

Personally, I really don’t have a dog in this fight; I am not a woman, and have never been responsible for a pregnancy. I suppose I would be classified as pro-choice because I do not think I have the right to tell any one what they ought to do with their body.

But none of this is easy. Here’s what worries me. The last time we had an issue this divisive -- slavery -- the politicians tried unsuccessfully to find a compromise for forty years, and then we had a Civil War. We don’t need another one of those.

There is some hypocrisy on both sides. Whatever liberals say, The Supreme Court did indeed “legislate from the bench” when they decided Roe vs. Wade. Whatever conservatives say, they now want the Court to do the same thing and overturn a 33-year-precedent.

Instead, both sides should be going about this the right way and fighting for a constitutional amendment. And in the meantime, hard as it may be, we need to do our best to get along.

November 29, 2005

The Roe vs. Wade Divide - The U.S. Supreme Court is about to hear arguments in yet another abortion case, the first since John Roberts became Chief Justice. But regardless of what the court decides, abortion has transformed our politics like no other issue since slavery. Abortion is dividing America. Will this last forever?

Jack talks with Scott Keeter who is the Director of Survey Research at the Pew Research Center for People and the Press; Ceci Connolly who is a National Staff Writer for the Washington Post; and Kathy Barks Hoffman who is the Head of the Lansing Bureau for the Associated Press.

Jihad Moukalled, an immigrant from Lebanon, had a wife, three little children and a wonderful new life in Farmington Hills, Michigan.

Then the MGM Casino came along. “There is nothing more destructive to life than gambling,” he mused in a note written one November night. “I wonder why there are government agencies to fight drugs and not gambling,” he added. Then he put his pen down, smothered his children, shot his wife, and blew his brains out.

He had lost $100,000 on one November night a few years ago.An isolated case? Hardly. Within eighteen months of the Windsor casino opening in 1994, there were 40 times as many gambling-related bankruptcies in Metropolitan Detroit.

By now you may have figured out that I do not like casino gambling. On this issue, I am in total agreement with classical Marxists and fundamentalist Christians. Casinos add absolutely nothing of lasting value to the economy. They strip weak people of money with the tempting offer of something for nothing.

That’s not what America is supposed to be about. Yes, we want to get our piece of the pie, but much of the reward is in working hard, defining ourselves, and building something along the way.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem with buying the weekly lottery ticket, or betting $5 in the office pool on how long it’ll be before the next Detroit Lions coach is fired. And yes, I know there are compulsive gamblers who would find a way to bet on anything.

But I suspect I’d have better luck staying on my diet if I didn’t sleep in a delicatessen. I have less of a problem with the Michigan casinos upstate run by Native Americans.

After five hundred years of playing against white men who used loaded dice and stacked decks, they are entitled to jiggle the balance sheet a bit. But the Detroit casinos appeal mostly to a clientele that can least afford it. I’ve been in them, and the scene looked grimmer than a coal mine. Those who can afford to gamble, still go to Vegas.

Ironically, Motown’s casinos are mostly Canada’s fault. Detroit only agreed to have casinos after Casino Windsor started siphoning away nearly a million a day. Now, they are probably here to stay. Kwame Kilpatrick was right when he said Detroit was in transition to becoming a casino economy -- even if he didn’t understand what that meant. I think I do understand. We rolled the dice on casinos.

November 28, 2005

Casino Economy - Detroit's Mayor says the city is in the process of moving from a manufacturing economy to a casino economy. Is Michigan on the road to becoming Nevada north? Are casinos the solution to our economic woes? What would a casino economy look like? And who wins?

Jack talks with Former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer; Roger Martin, spokesman for Greektown Casino;and William Thompson, author of "Gambling in America: An Encyclopedia of History Issues and Society" and Professor at University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Years ago, the wife of a publisher for whom I briefly worked met a Canadian diplomat. She was not, shall we say, intellectually sophisticated. “Why don’t you just join the United States?” she asked.

I was shocked and horribly embarrassed. The Canadian took it all instride. They are used to it. They’ve been putting up with our boorishness for a century and a half, and usually handle our bad manners with good grace.

The more you learn about the way the United States has treated Canada, the more you want to put a bag over your head any time you cross the border.

A few years ago, I had a Canadian college student who was, well, gorgeous. All the American guys were after her. In an effort to impress her, one showed her his cell phone. “This is a cell phone,” he said. “Have you ever seen one in Canada?” Another guy, when told she lived in Canada, reacted with confusion. “The bars in Windsor?” he said. “You live in the bars?”

However, our leaders have done their best to top that. When Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau spoke to Congress, a senior Wisconsin member said with admiration: “Some members of Congress didn’t think a Canadian could speak such good English.” President Lyndon Johnson once grabbed a Canadian Prime Minister by the lapels and shook him like a dog for not sufficiently supporting the Vietnam War.

Later, when LBJ visited the same man, Lester Pearson, a burly guard grabbed Pearson when he got up one night. “Who are you and where are you going?“ he barked. “I’m the Prime Minister of Canada, I live here and I’m about to go to the bathroom,” Pearson said.

There are many stories like that. They are embarrassing most of all because Canada is so important to us. Trade between Michigan and Ontario alone amounts to something like $100 billion every year.

Life as we know it wouldn’t be possible in the United States or Canada without each other. So yes, you are bound to take your sister a bit for granted, eh? But you don’t ask her who her father is.

Nor do you cheat her out of money that is rightfully hers. With regard to the softwood lumber dispute, we are treating Canada with less respect than we would show Chad.

Well, you may think that’s fine. But they have a lot more lumber up there, and minerals, not to mention oil. Some day, Canada may say, “You’ll be sorry.” And if so, you know what?

November 25, 2005

US Canadian Relations - We tend to think of our relationship with Canada as being the closest there is. Two nations shaking hands across the world's longest unguarded border. But when it comes to trade, Canada is hopping mad. We'll talk about why and what this means.

Jack talks with Jim Peterson,Canada's Minister of International Trade; James Blanchard who was the former US Ambassador to Canada; and David Crane, a writer for the Toronto Star.

When the federal government proclaimed that they intended to limit stem cell research for moral reasons, I thought of the usual stuff: The church’s hostility towards Copernicus and Galileo.

Joseph Stalin set Soviet biology back for decades by insisting that his scientists support the quack evolutionary theories of the scientific charlatan T. D. Lysenko.

But most of all, I thought of my hero: Ignaz Semmelweis. Never heard of him? Well, if your momma lived past childbirth, he is a big part of the reason why. He was a young doctor in an obstetrics ward in a Vienna hospital back in 1847, when he noticed something.

Mothers whose babies were delivered by midwives generally did fine. Mothers whose babies were delivered by doctors were dying like flies --more than ten percent of them died of infections. Why was this? Nobody knew about germs back then, but Semmelweis noticed that his fellow doctors would perform autopsies, wipe their hands on their aprons, or not at all, and then go examine new patients. Diseases spread like wildfire.

Semmelweis ordered his doctors to start washing their hands with disinfectant. The mortality rate dropped to less than one percent. He should have been a hero.

But he wasn’t. The other doctors bitterly resented being made to wash their hands. Some of them said they didn’t believe his theory, in spite of the evidence. They said God determined who lived and died. And he was fired from his job.

The good doctor became so depressed he had a nervous breakdown, and was put in an insane asylum. He resisted, and the attendants beat him up so badly that he died.

Now I have no idea how Ignaz Semmelweis would have felt about stem cell research. I can tell you this, though.

Those so-called doctors who destroyed him, and who fought this crazy idea that they should wash their hands?

November 24, 2005

Will Stem Cells Save The State - Stem cell science is one of the most promising areas in science today. It may also be the most controversial. The University of Michigan has created a new center for stem cell research, despite the fact that the state has one of the strictest laws limiting what can be done. What is the future of stem cell research in Michigan? Where should the boundary be between exploration and ethics?

Jack talks with State Representative Andrew Meisner; Sean Morrison, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Stem Cell Biology; and Howard Brody, Professor of Ethics at Michigan State University.

You may not know this, but early TV shows are why George W. Bush and not Al Gore became President.

That’s my theory, anyway. Let me explain. Television exploded on the scene after World War II, and the Federal Communications Commission began issuing licenses.

However, problems developed, mainly, a dispute over how color television would be transmitted. So in 1948, the FCC stopped issuing new licenses. They didn’t issue any more for four years.

Why did that matter? At that point, most large cities, such as Detroit and Washington, D.C., had TV stations. Small towns and rural areas didn’t. Though Al Gore, who was born in 1948, is officially from Tennessee, he really grew up in the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, where his father was in Congress. George Bush, a year and a half older, grew up in rural Texas. His family may have had money, but they didn’t have TV for awhile.

Al Gore, quintessential baby boomer, grew up with TV. Howdy Doody and Hopalong Cassidy were his hearth gods. The glowing light was always with him. Thus is was that at 2:15 on the morning of November 8, 2000, when the TV networks proclaimed him the loser, Al Gore bowed to the gods he had always known.

He did not check with his experts, who could have told him that a computer error had subtracted 30,000 votes from his column.

No. TV had spoken. Gore called Bush and conceded defeat. Within an hour or so, he took it back. But the damage had been done.

Television had proclaimed him a loser. Now he was a sore loser. Never mind that he won the popular vote by far more than John F. Kennedy had. Never mind that more people in Florida clearly intended to vote for him.

Today George W. Bush is president, and Al Gore is with a group of kids in a basement in San Francisco, trying to reinvent . . . TV.